Some things are worth noticing, but aren't worth writing down. They just aren't that important or useful. This is about the other things.

Thursday, July 25, 2013

The man from the cereal aisle

People
find each other, if they need to.

Several
years ago I saw a man in the cereal aisle at the supermarket. He was
darting from one brand to another, reading the side panel information, trying
to decide. He rushed, like he had to be
someplace else, soon.

He
looked like he took care of himself. He was neatly dressed, wearing a golf shirt tucked into jeans, and out-of-
the-box white sneakers. Probably late fifties.

"Excuse
me," he said to me as I passed.

He
held up two boxes of cereal. "Do you think there's a difference between
these Raisin Brans? I mean, have you tried both? Because, you know that if it
looks healthier," he indicated the
side panel, "it's not always worth it, because healthy things don't always
taste so good, right?" He paused. "What kind of cereal do you
like?"

He
wore no wedding ring. I remember thinking, divorced.

I
said, "I like the Kellogg's, but I don't think there's a big difference.
You'll be okay either way, I think," and I moved on. Before I rounded the corner, I heard behind me, "Excuse
me." When I turned, he was approaching a man around his own age. "Do
you think there's a difference between the Post Grape Nuts and the store
brand?"

At
the check-out next to mine he chatted with a woman behind him who struggled to
soothe her fussy baby and seemed seconds away from a meltdown herself.

"I
used to use the coupons," he was saying while he loaded the belt.
"But I just didn't like being forced to buy what was on sale, do you know
what I mean?" She responded
politely, "I guess, yeah." He
placed the last item on the belt and turned to the baby. "This is a busy place for a little guy
like you, isn't it? It certainly is." He was still moving in that hurried way, like
he was late for something else.

I
shopped every Wednesday when I had children at home and he was there half the
time. Same type of behavior...scrutinizing bread, cleaning products, batteries,
chips, one product after another in the
aisles, finger moving back and forth while he searched, rushing in that quick, quick, quick, pick it out way. Straightening when a
stranger passed, "Excuse me."

Once
he came up behind me in line. "You
know," he said, "I thought it would be a lot busier today, with the
storm coming. I was really, really surprised to see so few people here, weren't
you?" I said something like,
"I know, hard to predict."

I
remember thinking, lonely.

After I went back to work, I didn't see him again.

Two
weeks ago, I entered the supermarket parking lot behind a driver who couldn't
select from four spaces that were all close to the entrance. Turn, stop, start.
Turn, stop, start. While he crawled along, trying to pick one, I crawled along behind him,
blocked from the spaces he wasn't selecting. I remember thinking, decide.

A
few moments later, I walked into the store behind this driver and his
companion. She used a cane and limped
along while he darted ahead, then fell
back to keep pace, then rushed ahead,
etc. He was everywhere, circling her like a mosquito, it was like being behind
six people. They reached the carriages,
he placed her cane inside and she said, "No. I'll push." He agreed
and they moved on. She moved carefully, while he bounced around like a pinball.

I
could not get away from these people. I went left, they veered left. I went
right, so did they. They stood in the middle of aisles, talking to each other
across displays, scrutinizing their
selections . Stopping, starting, stopping, starting. "No wait!" she'd say, "Look at
this one, it's better."

In
the Crackers aisle a man in a Duck Dynasty t-shirt stood halfway between us, looking at the Triscuits display. The man left
his companion and approached him.

"Hey!"
he said to the t-shirt man, as if he knew him.

The
t-shirt man turned.

"I love
your shirt!" said the other man. "Duck Dynasty! I love that show!" He turned to his
companion, "Look at his shirt!"

"Oh
my God," she said, "We love
that show! We just bought the floor mats!"

The
t-shirt man, glanced down at himself, "Yeah," he said, "Friend
got this for me."

"We
love that show!" said the other man,
again.

"We
watch it all the time," said his companion.

"Yeah,
it's a good show," said the t-shirt man. "Take it easy," he
said, walking away.

The
man said to his companion, "I should get a shirt like that," and she
said, "Or a mug. They have mugs, too," and now I recognized him. The
man from the cereal aisle, five or six years later.

He
was exactly the same, darting this way and that, bringing his
companion a product, saying, "What do you think?"

When
I passed them in the aisle, I slowed enough to check. Sure enough, they wore
matching wedding bands. I wonder how
long it took for them to find each other, but I like to think that she had choices, and picked him, before he was late for something else.People
find each other, if they need to.

Hmm. I have a client like that. Bad enough working with him a few hours several times a year; I would rather shoot myself in the head than live with him.

Hopefully they are happy together, and in a way, it's kind of funny you hadn't seen him in 5-6 years. You would think, as often as we all frequent the grocery stores, that we would run into the same people more often.